False Appearances of the Body

There is often a difference between appearance and truth, but how does this apply to one’s body?

One’s true appearance is everything that is naturally part of one’s body. To put it another way, it is any naturally visible part of a person’s being. Things that could make a person’s true appearance important are that it tells us things like how healthy a person is, how old they are, how strong they are, and how beautiful or handsome their body is. If a person’s appearance is used as a criterion for something, like going on a date, that means that what the person looks like is important to you, but what a person looks like is their true appearance. The overall appearance is partly what the accessories look like, not the person. We should all be careful not to associate an overall appearance with the person, because it is not the person we are looking at, and if the person is the thing of interest, then that person’s true appearance is what is important.

If the person is important to you and the beauty of things is important to you, then that person's beauty--that which comes from their own bodies--should also be important.

Every person should decide whether others’ true appearances are important.

One’s true appearance is much like truths communicated by other means, such as speech; and just like in speech, a lie is only a lie if what is presented deceives a person about what they were supposed to understand from it, and if that was the intention. One such unspoken lie might be a false appearance. To clarify, a false appearance is only a lie if one’s true appearance is what is important to the communicator.

Creating a false appearance is changing one’s appearance so that it no longer represents one’s being. More specifically, it is to present one’s body in a way that deceives people about what makes up one’s body. If one’s true appearance is what is important, then creating a false appearance is deceptive, because people allow themselves to be deceived by focusing on the overall appearance.

However, one may blur the line by making a statement such as "But this color eyeshadow really brings out the color of my eyes". This statement appears legitimate, so let us examine it. When one says something like this, one is referring to potential. We are bringing out the person's potential. What is this potential part of? This part is tricky, because we cannot look to what it is associated with, since overall appearance is associated with the person. Since we are discussing potential to project an image, it is the person's potential only if that image is part of their physical being. However, only one image is part of a person's being in any given state of their body. Furthermore, if you compare this natural image with one's projected image, you will find that the features of their natural image which are supposedly being "brought out" do not look the same without the additions to the image. Focus is not the issue, because we naturally look at the whole. The person's features only add to the resulting impression, they do not define it. Furthermore, if it is truly the person's potential which we see, then theoretically we could see the same thing from their natural state. A person's true potential for beauty comes only from things within the body.

Clothing, jewelry, hair dye, makeup, and shaving all create false appearances. Jewelry creates a false appearance because it adds something to one’s true appearance thereby changing the overall appearance; clothing, hair dye, and makeup replace part of one’s true appearance with something else; shaving makes part of one’s true appearance invisible.

Furthermore, if that person’s true appearance is important, then if that person is aware of their true appearance’s importance, then jewelry, hair dye, makeup, and shaving are all done/worn for the purpose of deceiving people into thinking that one’s true appearance is more attractive than it really is. The reason that most men might not complain about this is that they enjoy seeing women who appear attractive, even if that appearance is false and deceptive. Purposeful clothing is not worn for this reason; it is worn to protect others from experiencing inappropriate or overwhelming emotions or to protect a body from the cold--such reasons are what makes an item of clothing purposeful. Again, creating a deceptive appearance for the purpose of deception is just as wrong as lying.

In the other hand, purposeful clothing is the equivalent of saying something deceptive for reasons not including deception, which is not lying. An example of this is telling an untruth accidentally. This example is close to wearing purposeful clothing because the deception caused by purposeful clothing is usually accidental. This is because the idea behind wearing clothing is to "keep a secret" by hiding part of one's true appearance. The only problem is that the only way to do this happens to be by replacing part of one's appearance with something else, resulting in "telling a lie". The lie is an accidental consequence of keeping a secret.

However, it is easy to get the wrong impression from all of this. If makeup and jewelry, etc. are all wrong, does that mean the goal is to look ugly? Not at all! The goal is to present what was created at conception, to present something beautiful in an honest way. We should strive to make ourselves stronger, healthier, and even choose the most attractive clothing, but we should also stay true to ourselves and not look to the world around us for beauty, if indeed our true appearance is something we value. For example, clothing should be chosen which reveals as much as possible about one's true appearance without creating false impressions and which serves the purposes of clothing to the maximum extent, balancing these purposes with the revelation of truth. Out of the clothing which does all of this well, it is good to choose the most attractive.

To clarify, creating false impressions is only truly affected by bodily attributes and their conveyance. In other words, the aspect of appearances termed "personality" is something unrelated to the perception of a person's true appearance. These impressions convey only an inward style about choices--which is how they are perceived--placing them outside the realm of the perception of physical appearance.

Note that it is impossible to present the world around us dishonestly. A wall with paint on it is going to look like a wall with paint on it, which is exactly what it is. Only when you separate something important out from the world does presenting its true appearance become an issue.

So, the next time someone really needs to know that a wall is brick, do not mold a layer of aluminum in front of drywall and paint it reddish-brown.